


A Moment

by Zagreuses_Toast



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Do I headcannon that every time they need to talk the TARDIS takes the doctor to a dance?, F/F, Other, Y'all ever just think about a immortal time traveler and her space ship for a second and lose it, all the sort ofs up there are because dreams, also my first fic so excuse it if it's terrible, they just love eachother so much yall, this is entirely self indulgent, yes yes i do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23105827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagreuses_Toast/pseuds/Zagreuses_Toast
Summary: What if the judoon hadn't rudely interrupted the doctor while she was trying to think
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Doctor's TARDIS
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

" just need a moment"  
The Doctor turned to face the doors and leaned heavily against the TARDIS. Glad for something solid to ground herself by. The master had gloated at 'breaking' her but if she was honest she didn't feel very broken, just heavy, very heavy, like someone had poured lead in all her bones. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off she was confronted with one of her least favorite pastimes, thinking about her own past. It was unpleasant enough when she was sure she remembered all of it but now knowing there were gaps larger than she could dream in her own self knowledge made her stomach drop down to her toes at the prospect. Normally she would have run away, fast, at the slightest hint that introspection was about to happen but the events of the day had forced her hand. 

And it had really only been a little more than a day in the end, even though her time in the matrix chamber had made it feel far far longer. The entire time she had spent in there she had been plagued by a deep and deep and disturbing sense of deja Vu, which she supposed makes sense considering they had been taking a walk down her own memory lane. There was this awful disconnect though, all the matrix projections had been from a third person viewpoint, she knew it was her past and felt it to be true but even now she couldn't remember the events from her own perspective, from her own eyes. She was horrified and felt beyond betrayed by what she had seen and learned but this inability to even remember and put into context that betrayal was possibly the worst of it. She had seen her own faces as a child, and saw how she had trusted that woman Tecteun, watched as that trust and love turned into fear and love, and finally just fear. But all she could feel towards her was a confused rage, none of the twisted things she knew she should for someone who seems to have been so important to her. Maybe that was for the best though, she knew first hand how destructive those feelings could be. Burning their way through her hearts like acid.

Maybe taking a moment was a mistake she thinks as she tries very hard not to think about the master, that usual acid eating at her. She thinks she may actually want him to stay dead this time, once and for all, and that scares her a more than she would like to admit. It probably shouldn't, she has been justified and more by the events of the past day if not all the events of the masters lives (and she tried very hard not to think about just how intimately she was responsible for those lives now, well, all except the stolen bodies she supposed). But this had been different, a desecration of their (his) species and deliberate burning of all the bridges that had still connected them, fully expecting her to drag him into the flames as well. And she's just so tired, tired to her core, past her bones and into the matter of her being. Whatever her being actually is, which at this point she has no clue on.

She hadn't noticed when she had slipped to the floor from the edge console, her mind churning and replaying everything, but she was sitting there now, metal grating cold against her. She pushed herself back and underneath, right up against the central column. It hummed warmly against her back. The TARDIS trying to give some comfort. She probably had been for a while only she was too wrapped up in her own head to notice. The TARDIS let out a few indignant whirrs and beeps at that. 

"Oi! I do pay attention to you, sometimes, more often than not in fact"

The insulted tone of her voice earned a wheezing groan she knew to be laughter from her ship.

She grinned, a small and fragile grin but still a grin. She was immensely glad of her ships company, it's not that she didn't love her fam but she'd dug her own grave by trying to distance herself from her past. They would comfort her but the amount of context she would need to give them to actually understand was daunting to say the least. and it would forever change the way they looked at her, if what she'd done today hadn't already. She wanted to avoid that as long as possible, if she was the same in their eyes maybe she could stay the same in hers.

No, if she was going to break apart she would do it in the comforting not quite solitude of her oldest friend.

Her oldest friend.

Even older than she had realized, recalling the blue box in the unmarked grave at Ruth's llight house. The familiarity that had greeted her once she'd gone inside. She hesitated before asking aloud,

"You knew me, before, the me's I've forgotten. Didn't you?"

The Doctor tilts her head back against the console and closes her eyes as she waits for her ships answer


	2. The dance floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This could probably be read separately and not make much of a difference but it is a continuation of the last chapter, the TARDIS and the doctor continue their conversation

The indistinct murmur of familiar voices filtered their way into The Doctors ears. Slowly a crowd of people became visible, milling around and chatting, around them a ballroom came into focus but the talking remained unintelligible. The Doctor walked forward amongst the group, smiling and nodding at what she assumed were familiar faces who smiled and nodded back. 

There was music playing somewhere, or at least that's what she assumed because some people were dancing further along, she couldn't quite hear it though. A woman with curly blonde hair and a rakish grin pays her what she thinks is a compliment and drags her eyes up and down her body, she notices for the first time she's wearing a tuxedo, a proper one this time. She doesn't remember changing into a tuxedo but then again she doesn't remember coming to this strange not quite party with all these strange not quite people. She looks up at the woman again and notices that she is holding out her hand, she repeats something that sounds like a question, asking The Doctor to dance? She shakes her head slightly

"Sorry, I'm waiting for someone"

And she was, although she couldn't tell who. She looked around the crowd again. Everyone was talking happily in groups or pairs and all of them looked familiar but unplaceable to her. Three more people asked her to dance (she thinks) a tall man with a overcoat and the same sort of grin that the blonde woman had sported, a intimidating woman in purple with a smile like a knife blade, and a lanky man with shaggy hair and a lopsided grin that was clearly trying it's best for him . None of them were who she was waiting for though so she turned them away as politely as she could while still not really being able to understand them.

At some point a hushed murmur passed over the crowd and everyone around her started moving to clear a space on the floor, the doctor shuffled along with them and found a place in the rim to watch with the others.watch for what she didn't yet know but at the center of the space stood a woman. 

She was tall and elegant in a very precise, almost architectural way. She wore a white dress with a lightly shimmering hexagonal pattern to it that faded into blue at its edges, the sleeves were see through and billowy with a layer of blue underneath. The dress was precise in the same way the woman was. Her black hair was tied up into a neat bun and at her neck was a necklace of white semicircles. The Doctor didn't recognize her either but in a different way than the others around her. They were all vague in a way the woman wasn't, the doctor had a feeling she was only unknown to her due to the white masquerade mask she wore over the upper half of her face, obscuring her eyes. Was this woman who she was waiting for?

At this point the doctor noticed that the woman was holding her hand out, waiting for a dance partner. The Doctor took a step forward, towards her, but before she took another she heard decisive footfalls from somewhere to her left as another woman strode out of the crowd confidently. This person The Doctor did recognize, it was The Doctor, the one who had called herself Ruth. She walked to the center of the space and bowed to the woman before taking her hand and guiding her into a dance that the doctor immediately recognized. The Rassilonian promenade, and the doctor stepped back to watch. 

It was stately and somewhat stiff as most things, even dances, were on Gallifrey. A dance meant for state occasions and ceremony rather than passion and intimacy, and the two dancers danced it well. The other Doctor was leading with the woman in the white mask equalling her movements, twirling, being dipped, and bowing when needed. It was textbook perfect at first, any instructor would be proud as every step was in time and every movement measured correctly. As the dance went on, slowly, towards its conclusion the other Doctor started changing things, slightly, a longer step here a quicker turn there and a flare that hadn't been there before suddenly added. The pace quickened and the other half of the pair began to grow slightly bolder too, still matching the other Doctors movements but adapting and accommodating the changes she had made to the dance with zeal, a light, barely there smile on her face where previously her expression had been neutral. Suddenly the other Doctor broke from the Gallifreyan dance completely, freestyling more along the lines of an earth dance with the other woman anticipating and equaling her moves, grin brighter than before. Then, after an especially ambitious spin the other Doctor disappeared. The woman was left halfway through one step and onto the next, her arms up and her grin fading into a light look of frustration. With a pang in her heart the Doctor didn't quite understand she realized she had been left there, and wouldn't dance again anytime soon. For some reason that bothered her more than her own disappearance from the dance.

While she was mulling this over the crowd around her started murmuring again, conversations she couldn't parse resuming once the dancers had stopped. Then, from just behind her a voice as clear as a bell cut through the muttering,

"What are you staring at"

"That woman, I know her, why do I know her?"

"You were just dancing with her"

"I suppose, but I don't know anything from when I was her"

The voice made a hum of assent at that and the Doctor realized she had just had her first real conversation with someone here. She tore her gaze off of the woman still standing at the center of the dance floor to face... the same woman. Her hair was down and curling down past her shoulders, gleaming in the light. Her dress was much the same as the white one but in brilliant golds, blues and blacks. Most importantly her face was now uncovered, a translucent golden masquerade mask resting upon her head looking more like a crown than anything else. Her eyes twinkled, golden blue and striking, meeting the doctors and locking her in place. Around them laughter lines crinkled as she smiled with undisguised fondness that the doctor found herself mirroring without thinking. 

"It's you."

"It's me"

"So we did travel together, before"

"Yes"

And the doctor connected some dots in her head, 

"Is that why you stole me?"

"No"

"No?"

The doctor tilted her head, a crease between her eyebrows belaying her confusion. She was unsure but desperate to know. Her ship just smiled fondly, taking a step closer.

"All I knew then was that you were a timelord who wanted freedom as much as I did, an opportunity"

An odd sense of relief flushed through the doctor, even if she rankled a little at the implication of being 'just' an opportunity. But,

"you did know, later?"

"Yes, when you regenerated"

"But why,"

"Why didn't I tell you? What could I do? I wasn't yet Me enough at first and even after that… I can't 'forget' things but I can be stopped from accessing or making the information available. And once I Was enough to work past that…"

"You didn't want to"

She looked away at that, towards the dancefloor where other couples had taken up the space of her younger self in white. The doctor watched her for a moment before it became clear she wasn't going to say much more.

"Why, why not"

The other woman's eyes stayed on the dancefloor for a few more seconds before returning to The Doctors, capturing her gaze. She still said nothing but she held her hand out. An invitation to dance. Without glancing down to hesitating The Doctor placed her hand in that of her oldest friend and, suddenly, she could hear the music. It came from all around them, mingling and carrying through the chatter of the crowd of other dancers, also clearer now, and swirling up to meet her ears. Beautiful, just on the right side of eerie, and perfect for a dance.The TARDISes hand hummed warmly in her own as she was led out onto the floor and into a graceful waltz. 

Time loosened and flowed around them, eddying and swirling around their dancing feet. Starlight shone in her partners eyes and neurinos followed in their wake as they made their way across a dancefloor that was more Galaxy than ballroom now. The doctor matched and met her ship step for step but never broke her gaze from the others. She was beautiful, then again the doctor had always thought so, and nothing around them could truly compare. Lost as she was the Doctor almost didn't her speak,

"Thief"

"...yes?"

"That's what I call you, not pilot, not owner, you are my thief."

"And I could call you mine"

The TARDIS smiled at that and it dazzled more than the nebulae around them. The doctor was making an effort to focus on her words and not get distracted by the stars tangling in her hair, her ship so rarely got the opportunity to talk after all. She was feeling surprisingly sappy at the moment considering the tense implications behind the conversation. The TARDIS continued,

"Exactly, and you seem much happier like this, stealing and being stolen in return."

"I think I am happier, I can't be sure though can I "

"No, and I can't make you sure, but I am, and I am happier with a thief than a pilot"

"Good that I've got sticky fingers then"

"Oh certainly"

They caught each other's eyes again at that and burst into laughter. The doctor stopped the dance to giggle uncontrollably while the TARDISes laugh echoed and resounded around them. The tension between them eased and the doctor laced her arms around her ships neck and brought her into a slow and close dance. She rested her head against her shoulder before speaking,

"Thank you"

"For what, keeping secrets from you?" 

"I suppose, not really. I meant for this, I know it takes loads of effort"

"The main effort is getting you to sleep in the first place"

"I sleep! Sometimes… a bit"

The TARDIS shifted back to arch an eyebrow in her direction before breaking into a laugh again. The Doctor just smiled. A hand came up to the side of her face as the laughter in the others eyes faded into deep and abiding fondness. The Doctor leaned into it. A thumb smoothed over her cheekbone as she let let her face be angled up and into a gentle kiss. She tasted ozone and metal and closed her eyes into the sensation.

And the she opened her eyes.

The familiar sight of the console room greeted her at an unfamiliar angle. She must have listed over sometime while she had slept. Above her a ding resounded, an alert to new information available for perusal. She had a feeling she knew what the information was, and part of her itched to know and to see. But another stronger part of her itched for something else, and she yawned as the itch behind her eyes grew. The dream may have been pleasant but I'd didn't amount to much rest. So, leaving her past to be explored at a later date, she rolled over to curl around the central console and drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep maintained by the machinery around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I did blatantly rip off that eight/TARDIS scene from that one EDA can you blame me

**Author's Note:**

> First ever published fic cuz I've been going feral over these two for a bit, second part will be up soon I think


End file.
